BERLIN

KEY FEATURES OF THE CITY Demographic Facts • around 3.500.000 inhabitants within the city-proper limits • city area of 891.82 square kilometers • over 5.8 million inhabitants in the Metropolitan Region Heritage • Registered heritage: Museum Island • Inscription: UNESCO World Heritage List • Date of inscription: 1999 EXISTING GOVERNANCE MECHANISMS

Responsible Authorities • Senate for Urban Development • Stadtebauliche sanierungsmafnohnohmen (Special Redevelopment Agencies) like the STERN agency

8.2 Berlin

Berlin is the capital of Germany and the centre of the Berlin- Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Located in northeastern Germany on the banks of Rivers Spree and Havel, the city occupies a strategic position at the gateway between western and eastern Europe. The presence of brownfield sites, undeveloped or temporally used areas — ascribable to the division and reunification of the city — makes Berlin a paradigm of inner-city regeneration. The symbolic values connected to the regeneration of the controversial built heritage of the German Democratic Republic — together with the development of new instruments to manage the adaptation of the existing urban fabric and the flourishing of community-based temporary uses — represent some of the specificities of the case study.

8.2.1 Key features of the city

Demographic facts Berlin is Germany's largest city and the second most populous city in the European Union, taking into account the proper city limits with around 3.500.000 inhabitants in the urban area of 891.82 square kilometers. The Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region covers an area of 30,370 square kilometers with a total population of over 5.8 million inhabitants.

Urban figures Urban development in Berlin has been always deeply related to its political vicissitudes, making the city at the centre of European experimentation in planning and reconstruction. Since the wall came down, this process has been guided by the double aim of restoring the role of the city centre as a competitive metropolis and the need to rehabilitate the suburban areas. The changes in the post-1989 planning scenario also relate to … selective collective memory-construction (Neill, 74). During the division of Berlin between east and west, there was a different urban development in each part of the city. in the planners were implementing the soviet urban development scheme, which included modular social housing (plattenbau) and monumental roads that were way too wide for the traffic at that time. In on the other hand, the urban development was less radical: most on the old urban structure was kept, but it was filled with concrete constructions which are typical to the west german post war development, and the big spaces along the division wall were left empty. By the end of the II world war, about 60% of the city was destroyed and it lost most of the historic urban fabric. The collapse of the in 1989 suddenly changed the planning scenario of the city, focused on the re-integration of East and West. The specific geography of West Berlin – as an ‘island’ within the former German Democratic Republic surrounded and imprisoned (Koolhaas) by the Berlin Wall — implied the impossibility for suburban expansion, so that housing developments tended to be at high densities and there was a high industrial presence. On the other side, as the East attracted high inward migration, a big house-building programme resulted in large estates of high-rise blocks. In contrast to capitalist cities, many of these were built in the centre. However, much of this housing was of poor quality and in desperate need of renovation and better provision of local services. These vicissitudes result in the presence of a large amount of gaps and holes in the urban tissue having a “programmatic potential, and the potential to inhabit a city differently represented a rare and unique power (…) It's a city that could have lived with its emptiness and have been the first European city to systematically cultivate the emptiness.” (Koolhaas).

Heritage Alt-Berlin (Old Berlin) in the sub-district which represents the original core of the modern Berlin. While Mitte is dominated by a mixture of styles — ranging from Baroque and neo-Classical monuments to Stalinist and contemporary-style buildings — Alt-Berlin is the place where the first stone fortification was built in 1250, and the city emerged from the two merchant settlements Berlin and Cölln, located on both sides of the Spree river. The registered heritage within the city centre corresponds to the Museum Island (Museumsinsel), inscribed in 1999 in the UNESCO World Heritage List, including the five museums built between 1824 and 1930. For what concerns the surrounding areas of the city, the WHL also includes two further inscriptions: the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, listed in 2008 as outstanding examples of new urban and architectural typologies resulting from the innovative housing policies of the years between 1910 and 1933, and the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin listed in 1990.

8.2.2 Existing governance mechanisms

Development and management plans In Berlin’s planning structure, two main instruments guide the development and management of the city: the Planwerk Innenstadt and the Leitbild Spreeraum. In 1999 the Planwerk Innenstadt was introduced by the Berlin Senate as the plan for the central area of the city. The resolution was based on an inner-city planning and design concep, defining a standard for the central boroughs of the city — divided into two main sections: City-West and the Historische Mitte — to abide in partnership with the Berlin Senate itself, forcing a major reference point to the future planning about the specific issues concerning the changing character and identity of the city’s inner areas, “to consciously erase and etch physical traces of memory into the built fabric of the city” (Neill, 91). The new age of Planwerk Innenstadt … main goal: spatial extension of the operational field .. Diversity and process oriented character of urban strategies In 2001, Berlin Senate has introduced the Leitbild Spreeraum, a document aimed at completing the previsions of the Planwerk Innenstadt through the definition of guidelines for an informal planning framework.

Legislation for the protection and management

8.2.4 Key aspects of the culture-based regeneration strategies

• Regional management: marketing and branding of . Aim is to make city west more attractive to tourists and consumers, to strengthen the network between economy and science and maintain the high quality of the residential area. • "Active city centers”. By 2016 a package of measures to link the public spaces and make the area around Kurfürstendamm and Tauentzienstraße more attractive. • Campus . A result from the project NAVI BC (sustainable revitalization around the creative neighborhood around the campus Berlin-Charlotteburg) where universities in the City West cooperate with other partners to create a strong marketing label under the name “ Campus Charlottenburg”. • Master plan Universities-Campus CityWest. Master plan for the better integration of both Universities' campuses in City West. • Zoofenster. In the west side of the construction work for a hotel and office complex Zoofenster started since 2008. • Great Berlin Wheel. 175 meter high wheel would be one of the mai touristic attractions. • Breitscheidplatz. Construction 2005-2006. The project included better organization of public space and street improvements. Was considered innovative cooperation between public private sector.